Abstract

In this paper we present a model of economic growth where agents are characterized by social status concern behaviour. With respect to the literature, we show that social status seeking is not always desirable for economic growth. Specially, we prove that the impact of status seeking on growth is positive only when saving is low or when the productivity of capital is low. In these two cases, the norm of social status seeking may be seen as a social incentive mechanism leading to wealth accumulation. These theoretical results are quite general and they do not depend on the functional forms assumed in the model